There’s an old saying when a person embarks on a new hobby. Don’t quit your day job. In Randall Denley’s case, he has nothing to worry about. What started out as an experiment for the Ottawa Citizen columnist with a serialized novel has now turned into a nice little gig for the London native. One Dead Sister, released this fall, is Denley’s second novel following his debut — The Perfect Candidate (the first novel Necessary Victims appeared only in the Citizen).
One Dead Sister is about fictional newspaper columnist Kris Redner, who unearths new details surround the murder of her sister nearly 30 years ago.
It’s in Kris’ blood to tell the big stories and there’s no bigger one than this. Bottom line: I enjoyed the book. There are a lot of popular female sleuths out there and Kris Redner deserves to have a place among them. The trick to any good mystery is to create suspense, keep the reader guessing, and Denley does that to a tee. Recently, I had the chance to interview Denley. The following is an edited transcript.Q. As a well known columnist in this city, you have covered a lot of sensational stories. What was the appeal of writing fiction when you’ve had so many great real life stories to cover?
A. In real life, you are always constrained by facts. You really have to stick to the truth as it is. You get into fiction and you have the challenge and pleasure of creating a whole world. It’s very difficult to create a world that comes from your mind but is seen as completely real to people who read it. It’s more difficult to create that fictional world than it is just to describe or report on what’s actually in front of us as journalists.
Q. In One Dead Sister, Kris Redner is a crime columnist. As a fellow journalist I know what the business is like. If a reader was to ask you how closely Redner resembles a real journalist, what would you say?
A. I think there are a few Kris’ in Toronto who I know. I wish there was a Kris here who would write a column about police, courts, crime on a full-time basis and go after it in the way, for example, in Toronto, Rosie DiManno has gone after the G20 issue. That’s the sort of story Kris would sink her teeth into. So I think the journalistic part of this is true.
Q. What did you like to read as a kid?
A. I was 95% fiction. I like stories and the challenge of telling stories. I started writing my own little stories when I was probably 7 or 8 years old on a toy typewriter, believe it or not. It’s been a while since I’ve been 7 or 8 years old. Fiction has always attracted me. I’ve always wanted to be a novelist. Being a columnist/novelist are the two things that interest me.
Q. We’re you into the typical mysteries like the Hardy Boys?
A. I read a lot of the Hardy Boys. That was probably the first mystery stuff I would have read. Pretty quickly got into Sherlock Homes.
Q. What do you read now?
A. Quite a few British and American writers. James Lee Burke is high on my list. He’s such a fantastic atmosphere writer. I’ve never been to Louisiana, but if you read his books... I like Carl Hiassen as well, probably because he’s a newspaper columnist as well. But he also has that sort of weird two polar opposites that I have. He likes mystery and satire and he manages to bring the two together in the same book. In One Dead Sister, I’m trying to write a suspenseful book but there’s room for some humour and pointed commentary about people, maybe some borderline satire.
Q. There are quite a few popular female sleuths out there. Did you model Redner after any particular one?
A. I modeled her after a real journalist more than a fictional person. If you model your character on a real person, then it’s just one image removed from the real thing. If you model your character on a fictional character, it’s a copy of a copy and it’s a little more fuzzy and removed from the real thing. I’ve known female journalists who are a lot like Kris. They’re tough, a bit manly without being unfeminine. They have that competitive edge.
Q. Did the experience of serializing a novel in the paper cement your belief that you might have another career in fiction writing?
A. If I’d gotten bad or zero responses, I would have thought, well that was an interesting experience, time to go back to being a columnist. In terms of what I was hearing, they really seemed to like it.
"More a drama-thriller than a mystery, One Dead Sister is deserving of a major literary prize. The clean, crisp writing delivers clearly drawn, colourful characters; vibrant descriptions of surroundings and events are a sensoral delight. This compelling read will leave you torn: you can't put the book down until you've reached the last page, but you don't want it to ever end." Deborah Richmond
"Wish I could forget what I just read to start the book all over again. An amazing thriller that captivated me to the last page." Elisabeth Richard
"Very good writing. Anytime I wasn't reading your novel, I was wondering and worrying about the characters. I think a book that engages you even when you aren't reading it really says a lot about the calibre of the writer." Cathy Curry
"I’m enjoying it, I’ve got to tell you." Steve Madely
"Just finished the book. Wow! Can't wait for your next one!" Tom Woodward
"A very enjoyable read. The characters were well developed, the plot was interesting." Doug Casey
"A very good read." Allan Rock
"Good read! Really enjoyed it." Doug McLarty
Want to make a comment? Go the Contact page. I’m interested in what you think.Member of a book club? I’m interested in doing book club events. If your club would like to read One Dead Sister, I am available to speak and answer questions at your book discussion. To find out more or book an event, get in touch with me through the Contact page.
By Bruce Ward, The Ottawa Citizen, November 7, 2010
One Dead Sister By Randall Denley $19.95,The last Ottawa-journalist-turned-author to cross over into the U.S. market was Rick Mofina, whose thrillers have become automatic bestsellers south of the border.
Now Randall Denley, the Citizen's top political columnist, seems poised to break through in the states with his latest novel.
In One Dead Sister, Denley has crafted a beguiling tale of a powerful political family and an unsolved murder that happened 30 years ago in a town in the Adirondacks.
The murder victim was the 14-year-old sister of Kris Redner, a Citizen columnist who covers crime and the courts. Redner spent her teenage years in Ontario, raised by a quirky uncle who took her in after her parents died shortly after her sister's murder.
Redner is an engaging hero. Called "Canada's queen of crime" in a fawning magazine profile, Redner left the Toronto Star's cop beat for the safer streets of Ottawa, where murders are still front-page news.
Denley is at his best in evoking the down-at-heel U.S. mountain town situated on Lake Champlain. Booze, not crystal meth, is still the drug of choice for the town's less savoury residents.
Redner has returned there because, in Ottawa, she received an old videotape that shows three hooded men sexually assaulting a girl. Redner recognizes her sister Kathy when the victim is forced to turn to the camera for one final humiliation.
The town is the fiefdom of Lowell Osborne, a U.S. senator campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination. Osborne's forebears founded the town and its shoe factory -- still the main source of employment. Tourists who come for the hunting and fishing help make the town solvent.
Osborne's political machine attempts to stop Redner from stirring up the past. When Redner's sister was murdered, she had been a summer employee working at the family "camp" -- a private estate with several log buildings overlooking a mountain lake. The family also owns the lake.
Osborne's handlers know even the most tenuous link between the senator and the murder victim will bring the U.S. national media scurrying to the town. Digging into a candidate's background can uncover all sorts of juicy surprises, as Sarah Palin supporters learned.
Denley's clean, crisp writing never takes priority over the pace of the plot, which drives along as smoothly as the SUVs favoured by the town's better class. The plot twists and turns like upstate New York's mountain roads, pulling the reader along all the way.
As a young reporter, Denley worked for the Owen Sound Sun-Times in Grey County. He knows about the oddities of small towns and the pleasures of trout fishing. The book's scenes set in the woods and hunting-and-fishing camps outside the town are entirely authentic, from his descriptions of the camp woodstove -- and how to light a fire properly -- to the sulphurous smells of the outhouse.
Citizen subscribers with long memories or some knowledge of the newsroom's inner workings may try to link Redner and other characters to real-life reporters and editors. That would be a waste of time. Redner shares some characteristics with first-rate crime reporters -- a thick-skinned tenacity, for example -- but I'd say she sprang entirely from Denley's yeasty imagination.
Fairly central to the plot is a Citizen news editor, a Brit with a reputation as a swordsman -- a hard drinker and a womanizer, that is. He could be a composite of Brit journos who rose to prominence in Toronto newsrooms of the 1960s, some of whom are still around. But there are no cardboard characters in Denley's book. Redner, especially, is fully formed.
There's an adage in publishing that says a farmer likes a farmer story. It's a fact that U.S. readers, especially in the mystery/thriller genre, go for books with an American hero that take place in the U.S. It's hard for a Canadian mystery writer to get a foot in the door.
Like Mofina before him, Denley has probably set his book in the states in hopes of attracting a U.S. publisher. Denley has many fans in the Ottawa area, but One Dead Sister deserves a wider audience.
Here's hoping that some sharpie at a big publishing house will spot the book's potential and act accordingly.
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